Time Zone Switcher

中文说明

A macOS menu bar app for temporarily switching the system time zone and restoring it later.

Use it when you need to test calendar, schedule, subscription, localization, or region-sensitive behavior without permanently changing your normal system setup.

Download the latest release

Why It Exists

Developers, QA engineers, product builders, and support teams often need to answer questions like:

• Does this calendar event render correctly in Pacific Time?
• Does a scheduled workflow cross midnight in another region?
• Does a subscription, billing period, or date boundary behave correctly outside my local time zone?
• Can I reproduce a customer issue that only appears in another time zone?

Time Zone Switcher makes that workflow fast and reversible from the menu bar.

Features

• Menu bar only: no Dock icon.
• Add several IANA time zones, such as America/Los_Angeles and Asia/Shanghai, and see each local time together.
• Set any saved time zone as the system time zone. The first switch remembers the original time zone until you restore it.
• Choose the menu bar clock: follow the system time zone, show only the icon, or pin one saved time zone.
• Choose a time format from presets, including time only, abbreviation and time, a Chinese date, an English date, or a custom pattern. Seconds are optional.
• Choose the interface language: follow the system, Simplified Chinese, or English. The language does not decide the clock pattern.
• Localized time zone display names with the IANA identifier kept visible.
• Native SwiftUI controls and macOS material styling.

Privacy and Security

• No analytics.
• No network requests.
• No background polling jobs.
• Administrator permission is requested only when you change or restore the system time zone.
• The system command used is:

systemsetup -settimezone <IANA time zone identifier>

Installation

Download the latest release disk image, open it, and drag Time Zone Switcher onto the Applications folder.

This project currently publishes unsigned, non-notarized open-source builds. On first launch, macOS may block the app because it was downloaded from the internet. To open it:

1. Open System Settings.
2. Go to Privacy & Security.
3. Find the blocked app message and choose Open Anyway.

You can also Control-click the app and choose Open.

Build From Source

Requirements:

• macOS 26+
• Xcode 26+
• Swift 6.3+

Build the app bundle:

Scripts/build_app.sh

Run it:

open "dist/Time Zone Switcher.app"

Create a release disk image:

Scripts/package_release.sh

Roadmap

• Favorite time zones.
• Keyboard shortcuts.
• Optional notarized builds.
• More localization.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT